Who's been a busy bee then?

Maybe it's because there's a hint of spring in the air but I finally got a burst of energy again this week and got so much done that had been bugging me for ages! Do you know what I mean by the "eternal invisible to-do list"? The things you need/want to get around to doing but just never seem to get there? Well I decided to start putting the list down on paper and trying to knock a couple of them out every day. I mean, seriously, most of them only take a few minutes anyway, right? So I've been quite a busy bee this week and it feels pretty good. (At this point I was going to post an audio of Arthur Askey singing Busy Bee but thought the better of it - although I'm definitely showing my age with that one)!

My mobile phone bill has been bugging me for quite some time because when I signed up for a new contract (and got my iPhone 11 for €9) about nine months ago, the contract I agreed to was for around €40/month, which was pretty much what I was paying before. But, every month that damn bill would come in and I would be out over €80!!!, and while I'm not obsessive about it I make sure any extra-EU calls (to the UK or the US) are always made via wifi so I couldn't understand why I was still clocking up an €80+ monthly phone bill! Eventually I pulled up my contract online and saw that I was being billed the €40 for my current contract and then another €40 for a different mobile line. So I promptly called them up, sat through God-knows how many "press 1 for ...., press 2 for ...., para español marque el número ...." and finally got through to a real person! I explained my problem to her and asked what that other mobile number was and she said it was the additional number that was linked to my previous 4G wifi contract (as opposed to my new ADSL line wifi)! Say what? I mailed that box back to them about nine months ago (which she acknowledged), but apparently since I hadn't actually asked for them to cancel the contract, I was still paying the extra €40/month, even though I didn't have the equipment! Lordy, lordy, while she was very helpful and cancelled the contract there and then, I do feel it's just another hoop you have to jump through so that they can keep billing you. Not that €40 is that much money, but it sure was bugging the hell out of me!

I also got a bit of varnishing done in my large bathroom as I was finding that my paint job on the made-to-measure unit chipped rather easily. So now I'm having to empty everything yet again and go over the paint job with varnish I luckily just happened to have in my basement. I'm not doing such a great job but I've come to realize that I really am a "good enough" kinda person, so I guess perfectionism really isn't going to be the death of me!

Then I got a load of veggie seeds planted and "housed" behind the sofa in my very sunny living room and man those things are going wild - they look like triffids at this point! I'm praying I haven't jumped the gun and planted them too early since we really shouldn't plant out here before mid-May because of the risk of frost, so if you don't hear from me ever again it will probably be because I have been murdered by a triffid making it's way upstairs and strangling me in my sleep!

In it's day (1962), that was a pretty good film!

Then it was time to get the pressure sprayer out, and while I enjoy the actual washing bit, I just hate setting the darn thing up and moving everything out the way, although I have to admit my back terrace looks so much better now - or at least until we get the next sand dump from the Sahara! I also finally got myself booked onto a vegan cookery course at the vegan restaurant up the road. While I doubt I would ever go vegan (vegetarian possibly), the food at this place is just wonderful so I'm thinking it can't hurt to learn how to make some of their dishes, even if they only turn out half as good as in the restaurant!

On the exercise front I went to the gym twice last week and added in two machines that I have always liked and cut out one machine which I think is too hard on my knees. And again, the place is virtually empty every time I go so I will definitely sign back up when my contract expires shortly. At yoga lately she has been teaching us the "Five Tibetans" postures. While I frankly don't understand much about the theory, they are movements designed to stimulate energy (just as the sap in plants/trees begins to rise again in the spring), and while they haven't been my favourite exercises, I can definitely feel a difference compared to the previous postures we have been working on! But isn't it great when you've go so much to learn that everything is a novel experience!

The "Five Tibetans" postures
(I don't look anything like this)!

I also finally got off my backside and took myself down to the lake at Passy for a walk earlier this week - which was just as well because it's piddling down here now and I think they've even forecast snow in the next couple of days!

The Mont Blanc!

Then on Tuesday night I dropped my car off at Ford for them to take off my winter tyres (ha, ha, there's snow forecast this weekend) and put new summer tyres on. I was bloody lazy though because I could have walked back home in about an hour, but as it was all uphill I chickened out and caught the bone-rattling minibus service back home, on the pretext of figuring out exactly which villages it stops at! When I got there Thiery (the Ford guy) was telling me how busy they are (I thought he looked tired) but they couldn't order any new cars for stock at the moment because most of their steering wheels come from Ukraine! I guess you don't realize how interdependent we all are until something like this happens! On a positive note, I at least managed the one hour walk back down there on Wednesday to pick my car up!

My ex arrived from the States on Sunday in time for Charlie's first birthday. He was due in to Geneva at 7.30 a.m. (I bet that pleased André, who definitely likes his sleep), but the flight was delayed and he only arrived at 10 a.m. Still, he got to meet Charlie later that day and he's just as dotty about him as I imagined he would be. Monday was Charlie's birthday (I know, where oh where has the year gone?), so we were all invited over to Jordan and Jen's for a fondue. I stopped in at Maison Janin to buy a couple of desserts and man is that place a gold mine. It was heaving with so many people buying bread, sandwiches, coffee and desserts, I can't even begin to imagine how much money they must rake in in a day!

Maison Janin!

Things were fine with my ex (who I haven't seen in three years), but to be honest I didn't think he looked too well - although that might just have been jetlag! Charlie is not yet walking - although I sense we're getting closer every day - but man oh man has he got a mouth on him. He's an incredibly happy little boy but the decibels in that room with his "singing" were quite something! Still, I'd rather him like that than quiet and subdued!

And finally, I went grocery shopping today and since I go to a lot of farmers' markets I generally shop with cash because I would say at least 50% of the stalls don't take card payments. I don't mind at all as I think it's important to keep cash circulating and not go totally digital, but I must have excelled myself today by walking out of there with just two cents left out of the cash in my wallet. Don't spend it all at once right?

This and that!

Progress on all the stuff I want to tackle round here is very slow but at least it is making some forward momentum. Jordan had to come back to my place to replace the piping underneath the sinks in the large bathroom as he wasn't happy with it. As he was doing whatever it is he does, he asked what kind of screwdrivers I had because he needed to poke a hole in the one piece of piping, so I suggested he might prefer to use my soldering iron instead! "You have a soldering iron"? Ha, yes I do, I bought it the other week because I'm starting in on my annual "let's grow fruit and vegetables in weird containers" kick, so I bought it to poke drainage holes in the large plastic jugs/buckets etc. that I'm hoping to use once we can plant outside. Actually I've already got one bucket out in the garden with peas in (I read they're fine to plant out already) and so far they're going great guns. Jordan was actually late getting here because traffic was all backed up on his way through Marignier - which was how he came to tell me that they are laying huge underground piping which will link Marignier to Cluses (about 10 km) in preparation for hooking it up to a kind of power station that will be used to burn trash and supply heat using the generated steam. That's a round about way of saying that they've started an ambitious project to turn our trash into energy, and I think that's great!

I've always been interested in "alternative technology" and different ways of doing things (hence growing lettuces up my cherry tree in plastic bottles a few years ago (the neighbours brought their friends round to have a look)! Many moons ago, when I was pregnant with André, we went to see family in North Wales and my cousin took us to visit the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth - I found it fascinating. I've just looked up their website and they've obviously made great strides over the last 35 years since my visit so I would love to go again!

Centre for Alternative Technology, Machynlleth!

Then the other night I was watching Youtube videos on gardening when up popped a video about a lady's fabulous garden in the Ecovillage in Findhorn, Scotland! So of course I had to head over there and take a look and found another great place that I would like to visit sometime. At Findhorn they used to use enormous vats to distil whiskey - I mean seriously huge vats - and some of those vats were turned into living quarters after they had outlived their usefulness in the whiskey business. Imagine that, living in a whiskey vat. I wonder if they have detectors to indicate if you might be running the risk of suffocation by whiskey fumes?

Ecovillage, Findhorn!

Like the UK, we also got hammered last week by the wind and rain carrying sand from Africa and leaving our cars filthy and my velux windows looking like someone had been stabbed to death on them. I got the car cleaned up pretty easily but the windows are quite another matter and look dreadful still!

I also managed to get to the gym twice this past week and thoroughly enjoyed myself. As always, it seems to me if I go in the middle of the day I can pretty much have the upper floor (the weight room) to myself so what's not to like? No hassle and no-one to witness my pathetic efforts!

I also went to IKEA, Geneva, twice this week and for someone trying to declutter I guess that doesn't make much sense. Actually I went with Jen and her mom and got to have a good look round at bathroom installations. I think I've made up my mind on the wash basin and unit I want for the smaller bathroom. Jordan told me I can buy what I want at IKEA but not the nuts and bolts because he always says that the hardware in these places is crap and he will provide that stuff or get it from where the professionals get it. I'm happy to oblige as he'll be installing it after all!

Since last Monday France has (finally) lifted 99% of its covid restrictions. We no longer have to wear masks everywhere indoors (with the exception of hospitals, etc.) and no pass is required to go to cinemas, restaurants, museums or to sit on a café terrace and have a coffee! Hallelujah, what it feels like to be free! Because of that on Saturday Jen and I were able to go to a bourse in her small town. I've finally figured out that a bourse is like a vide-grenier/car boot/garage sale but concentrating on one particular range of items. In this case it was children's stuff - clothes, toys, books etc., all second-hand, and we came out of there with a fair few items of clothing and books for Charlie for when he's around two years old. Jen had put a few items in the sale and ended up selling for €108 so she was well pleased. But how times have changed! All sellers were given their own identification code, and as each item was sold the seller's QR code was scanned and they could keep track of sales as the day went on. A QR code for a vide-grenier? Bloody hell, they've got QR codes for everything now, haven't they!

I was delighted to see that British/Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was finally released from Iran after being held for six years on "spying charges". There has since been somewhat of a backlash after she gave a press conference in which she was less than gracious about those that secured her release. Whatever the truth of it all, I have to say she has an absolute diamond of a husband because he has worked tirelessly these last six years to keep her name in the spotlight - even going on hunger strike at one point - so I wish them nothing but good things going forward!

Nazanin and Richard Ratcliffe and their daughter!

And finally, we had our first board game evening in goodness knows how long last Saturday up at André's place and it was really fun. It gave everyone a chance to see his new place and to meet Charlie, if they hadn't already done so - and we had a really good time!

We split into two groups to play two different games as we were just too big a group to play all together. The game we played involved getting your team to say a particular word - first by using as many words as you like to describe it, second time round the table by using just one word, and third time round by miming the word. At one point André was trying to get his team mate, Fabrice, to say the word chevreuil!

Chevreuil - a doe!

Trouble is, André must have got hold of the wrong end of the stick and ended up doing a wonderful impersonation of an ecureuil - I'm guessing beer may have been involved!

Ecureuil - a squirrel!

Poor Fabrice, I'm not sure how he was ever going to guess "doe" with André doing his award-worthy impression of a squirrel! Somehow that tickled me to bits and I got a severe fit of the giggles afterwards, which was of course infectious and we all ended up roaring! My ex arrives here Sunday morning to meet Charlie for the first time and will be staying with André for three weeks, as he will be on leave. While he's looking forward to seeing his dad they stand a chance of clashing too (his dad can be bloody hard work), but André said if that happens he'll just drive him down to Jordan and Jen's and abandon him, so he's got it all worked out, just in case! Fingers crossed that it all goes well - I'm sure it will!

Fake heiress Anna Sorokin deported!

It's weird that I just wrote about her a couple of days ago and then tonight I read that she's been deported back to Germany. I think they made the right decision because I, for one, believe she would only just continue her cons if they allowed her to remain in the US. Look out Germany, I guess!

Curating stuff!

I took a short break from the news/social media this week and I have to admit it did me the world of good. I can never stay away too long but a fews days' break seems to do me so much good. Not that the horrid stuff goes away, of course, but it gives my mind a rest to turn it all off, however briefly!

The French elections are getting ever closer and I just saw tonight that two of the more prominent candidates have announced an agreement between their parties to try to oust Napoleon. The French have this weird (to my mind) election process where in order to even stand for election you have to have confirmed support from X number of French mayors. Florian Philippot has been out campaigning solidly for about a year now and I like him very much, but he didn't get enough mayoral support and cannot stand. So he has gotten together with Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (who will be running) to forge an alliance based on five campaign promises and they announced it in a large press conference tonight. Of course the other candidates don't get anywhere near the air time that Macron gets, so while I'm afraid it is almost a done deal that Macron will get back in (he has backers with deep pockets), I would love to see Dupont-Aignan make it through to the second round and maybe people would see that there is an alternative to Macron and vote him in! I don't go in for political debates much but those two working together would be my idea of a pretty darn good team!

On Thursday I drove André back down to Valence to pick up his new car and he is thrilled with it. It's definitely very nippy and everyone is suitably impressed, but when I filled my car back up with petrol when I got back - ouch! It's now at almost $10/gallon so I would think anyone that doesn't have to do the km will definitely avoid it. I just pity those that can't avoid it, although there is (and has been for some time) a big push to get people car-pooling so maybe some good will come out of this price hike!

I finished watching the Netflix series Inventing Anna last week and yet again it kinda blows my mind how seemingly easily some people can fool others! It's the true story (although embellished I would guess) of Anna Sorokin who claimed she was a German heiress and convinced not only friends and acquaintances to fund her lavish lifestyle but also big-name banks. She was 26 when she started her antics in the US and to be honest I didn't feel that the actress pulled it off as she just came across as a rather silly young girl who thought prancing around in a short skirt would make people fall for her lies. Well more fool me, I guess, because that seems to be exactly what happened. Then the other day I watched an interview with the real Anna Sorokin and boy did she come over as an extremely arrogant, smug young woman - you know, with a face you'd just like to punch. More surprising to me is that she was no great looker either. I mean, if she had been some stunning beauty I could maybe have understood the appeal but I guess it just goes to show that if you have the self-confidence or chutzpah to try it, you might just pull it off!

Anna Sorokin

Spring is definitely in the air now and with that come all my grandiose plans for a massive veggie garden - which of course probably won't pan out because I go off the boil too easily. That being said, I'm already watching gardening videos on my computer and just discovered a young English woman called Emma Bailey and am really enjoying her channel. She comes over as a bit dippy and a real giggler but it's such fun to watch her as opposed to the obnoxious Ms Sorokin!

Oh and I almost forgot to mention, Jen asked me the other day if she could throw a surprise 30th birthday party for Jordan at my place on 4 June. Of course I said yes, only to find out afterwards that I'll be hosting about 50 people if they all come!!!! Yikes, pray for good weather won't you! She and her friends will organize it all but will need my house and garden to host everyone. So the first thing I did was get myself a child gate to put across the back garage door - which is right next to the rather nasty cellar steps! There will potentially be five or six very young children at the party and those cellar steps have always given me nightmares whenever young children are around. That being said, Jordan and Jen came over on Saturday for Jordan to install my new bathroom sinks. In the meantime I spent my time on my hands and knees chasing Charlie (he's still not walking) and both grandma and Munchkin were exhausted at the end of the day. On the plus side, Jen had Charlie climb down my internal stairs for the first time very slowly on his belly, to a great round of applause when he finally got to the bottom. Judging by the smile on his face you'd think he'd just carried out a moon landing!

Having that party lined up means I really want to start getting rid of stuff - I just have way too much of it and the other night I was thinking "do you really want to spend the rest of your life curating stuff which, for the most part, has no real value to you"? So you store, dust and curate this stuff and then hopefully one day you will consider it "done". But what if that's the day you keel over dead having spent your lifetime curating crap and for what? I don't know, I think it's probably true that as we get older we start to realize we don't need all this stuff and it's really just another millstone around our necks - or am I wrong?

I think this hit home even more today as a friend from work sent me a message to ask if I'd heard that H had died in Australia? I hadn't, as it turned out, but H and I were friends, went out walking together occasionally or to the theatre and she and I shared an office for a couple of years in HR. She used to handle the job vacancies and very often people would try to get information out of her about what was going on with a particular vacancy. She was very professional and never discussed it with anyone, certainly never said anything to me about it, but in any case I was never interested anyway. But, I do remember her bursting out laughing one time and she just went "oh the poor sod". When I asked her what was so funny she mentioned that an external candidate had applied both for the position of Chief Economist and also for the vacancy for a delivery driver! Not the same skill set I would think but ....!

My kids adored H because when they were pretty young they would catch the train from school and meet me in the office to go home and she was always messing around with them. She would rib on them and they would make fun of her appalling French accent because despite many years living in Geneva she never mastered French or the accent for the limited French she did have. She didn't have children of her own (I don't think she wanted them), but was always great fun with the kids. While I wasn't her closest friend we were still good friends and at only a few years older than me it came as something of a shock this morning to hear about her relatively sudden death. As she always said "it's hard to fly like an eagle when you're surrounded by a bunch of turkeys"! RIP Chookie, my old mate!

So silly!

My niece just posted on FB a "Siegfried and Joy" video filmed in Germany. It is really silly - a kinda "failed magicians" gag à la Tommy Cooper, for those of you in the U.K. It was totally daft but it made a me smile, as I have the same juvenile sense of humour as she does! I've mentioned before that I love Gary Larsen. Indeed I bought the complete set of his works about 15 years ago (expensive) and also bought both my sons a set for Christmas 2021. When I told my niece how much her post made me laugh she mentioned The Gods Must Be Crazy film that she'd seen at my place over 20 years ago. She'd loved that so much that she went out and bought it for herself! Gosh I remember seeing that as a new release in Lyon in 1981 and my then boyfriend was on the floor of the cinema laughing. The first 10 minutes I remember thinking "what the heck ...." but afterwards it really kicked in and was just so silly. It was a low-budget film originally made in Afrikaans but it was such a success they had to go back and redo it in English. I actually bought the DVD in both English and French (had to get separate DVDs at the time) but I think it's probably on Youtube now too. If you don't enjoy "silly", I wouldn't bother, but if you do .... well, it's a hoot!

Like mother, like son!

André's car finally died a death last week. His dad had actually bought it new in 2009 and André bought it off him when dad moved back to the States in 2015. He loved that car but as he'd put quite a bit of money into it in 2021 I guess even he knew this latest breakdown was one too many. I think it's a 2009 Ford Mondeo Break but I'm not totally sure, and I don't really know the km on it because it had to have a totally new engine about seven years ago because his dad seemingly didn't believe in putting oil in it! Oh well, at least André got pleasure out of it for a few years. He called me middle of last week to say that he'd seen a car that he fancied on France's central database and what did I think of the price? Ha, as if I know anything about what constitutes a good deal! The only thing I told him is not to buy new because I reckon they depreciate about 10% as soon as you drive them off the lot! He told me that he had a zoom meeting with the bank on Friday to see about a loan and in the meantime I pulled up the bank's web page (we use the same bank), and without logging in I used their loan calculator to get a rough idea of how much he could expect to pay. Just to reiterate, I didn't log on to their site, I just used their calculator - as that's relevant to what happened a couple of days later. Anyway, the car he was interested in was in Valence (about 250 km from here) so I told him I would be happy to drive him down there on Saturday if he set an appointment up with the dealer. As the bank approved his loan on the Friday already, he needed to go there on Saturday morning to sign, so we agreed that I would pick him up and we'd head out straight after the bank. I got to his place around 9.30 a.m. and called to say I was outside. So he goes "so am I". Me: "no you're not, I'm by the entrance". Him: "yes I am and no you're not"! Say what? Turns out he'd sent me a text message (to which I'd replied "ok") saying that he'd come over to my place on his motorbike and we could leave from here. Ha, I was just about to get in the shower when he sent that message and didn't have my glasses on so I replied "ok" to us going together, but hadn't seen or been able to decipher the bit about him coming over here! Oh well, it worked out in the end, he signed the loan paperwork and by 10.30 we were heading out of my village. We'd only gone about 100 metres when my mobile went and although I don't usually answer to numbers I don't recognize, for some reason I stopped and picked this one up, and it was the bank saying that they'd seen I'd been looking at loan calculations yesterday and could they help? Say what? I hadn't logged on to their site and yet they still knew I'd been using their loan calculator! I've always known Big Brother is watching but I really never thought it was that bad! Seriously?

Traffic wasn't too bad considering it was a Saturday, and change-over day for the skiers, so when we got to within 50 km of Valence we pulled off at a motorway rest stop to get something to eat and boy was it crowded. André said he reckoned the restaurant should have asked for our vaccine passports but that place was heaving and they wouldn't have had a snowflake's chance in hell of scanning anyone's pass even if they'd wanted too - but nobody tried anyway! We must have been about 50 people lined up one on top of the other waiting to order, and maybe 200 people in there all in all - so much for social distancing right? Anyway, all's well that ends well, André fell in love with the car right there and then and in a few days we will be driving back down there to pick it up. So when I say he's just like me, I mean that we both make our minds up pretty much instantly. Heck he bought his apartment without even seeing it as it wasn't built yet - he just knew he liked the area and the floor plan, and look how well that worked out. And I'm the same, I knew instantly that I liked the house I'm in now, I can pick out shoes/clothes/glasses in about five seconds flat and pretty much tend to always go for the first thing that catches my eye anyway. Actually since I will hopefully be getting my bathrooms started soon (more on that in another post), I've been looking at tiling for the floor and walls and think I know what I'm going to buy already, after looking online for about 30 minutes!

What's more we had a really good time driving down there, yacking non-stop about anything and everything and it was great. I felt like I had lost my son to a certain extent at the end of my marriage because although it was my husband laying into me (hell, André would be the one dragging him off me most of the time), I think the fact that his dad would later burst into tears did a number on André and that was where I lost him. He told me once "you're strong and dad isn't" and while that's true, I felt it also cost me my relationship with my son as he felt he needed to "be there" for his dad. Thankfully that ended when my ex moved back to the States in 2015. Now, though, we have a great relationship and I'm really happy about that!

In fact just yesterday he called me to ask where I bought my tea bags as he had run out (the good quality ones we get in the UK, not the crappy Lipton stuff they drink over here). I told him where I buy them but also said he should be careful because if the Brits found out he'd let his stock of tea bags run out they might have to take his citizenship away! You can never be too careful these days! I usually buy them at the Chinese store up the road (they sell everything) and just pick them up when I see them (they're not always available), so I told him I would bring him some over on my way to the gym later. Well, when I got there, the weather was glorious and we ended up sitting on his balcony having a beer and putting the world to rights - as you do - so guess who didn't make it to the gym after all - yeah, me!

Talking of unwanted phone calls, I had a call on my mobile today from a Paris number. Like an idiot I picked it up and it was someone trying to get me to set up a monthly donation of €40 to Douleurs Sans Frontières (Pain Without Borders). I guess they're a bit like Doctors Without Borders but I'd never heard of them. Sadly I won't have anything to do with Doctors Without Borders since the day many years ago the then top guy (Bernard Kouchner) crashed his DWB-provided porsche!!!! He may well have co-founded a wonderful organisation, but I didn't like him much to begin with because he was forever falling to his knees "in distress" (great photo op) at some of the awful sites he visited and I just found him to be way too theatrical! Shame really, as I'm sure they do wonderful work! Anyway, I digress! As this bird was pushing very hard to get me to set up a monthly donation I told her that as I was sitting in front of my computer I was just going to look up how much their CEO's salary was and I would let her know. I didn't find it out, as it happens, but I told her I have my own preferred local charities (true) and was able to get her off the line eventually! Then tonight I got yet another bloody phone call on my landline at 8.45 p.m.!!! It's a number that routinely calls me without leaving a message, but seriously? They are calling at 8.45 p.m. and think they're going to get a good reaction?

And finally, poor Charlie has been sick again. Man oh man has that little boy been hammered during his first year! I know, of course, it's because of the day care but he really does seem to have been through the wringer. Jen managed to get an appointment with an out-of-hours doctor as she thought he had chickenpox, but it turned out to be hand, foot and mouth disease again! Say what? This was what he had when he was about five months old and was seriously miserable - much, much worse than covid, which he just sailed through. And we all thought it was a "one and done" but apparently not. Seeing where he got those blisters though (hands, feet, chin and mouth), it was quite obviously hand, foot and mouth again! I went over to help Jen out as the poor little guy was just miserable and wanted to be in someone's arms as much as possible - and then, two days later, he was over it again! The little boy next door also had it (same day care) so the neighbour was going through the same thing at the same time. Still, he's good now and as Tuesday was Carnaval (Mardi Gras) they asked the parents to dress the kids up. You know the character Where's Wally (in the UK), or Where's Waldo (in the US)? Well in France it's Where's Charlie so Jen's choice of outfit for the babe was a no-brainer! Not that he probably could care less, but I'm so glad he was well enough to go back to the crèche on Tuesday as they had a "special surprise" for all the children. And since we're all getting together as a family again on Sunday at Jordan and Jen's place for lunch and a board game afternoon, I'm sure there will be plenty of willing arms to spoil him rotten!